Real Madrid beats Barcelona in revenues

by Guilherme Neto

Real Madrid and Barcelona are the biggest rivals not only on the pitch, but also off the pitch. The two clubs have been dominating Spanish and European football in the last decade and they’ve also been on a tight competition when it comes to generating revenues. Earlier this week, we got to know how much each club made last season (2017-18) and Real Madrid were certainly happy to show they generated 9% more revenues than Barcelona. The 12-time European champions finished the season with a total income of 748,04 million euros, while Barcelona didn’t go beyond the 686 million euros.

What’s even more curious about these numbers is that Barcelona earned a lot more than Real Madrid from the transfer season occurred in the summer of 2017. The Blaugrana sold Neymar to PSG for a record fee of 222 million euros, while Madrid’s biggest selling was Álvaro Morata to Chelsea, for whom they received 54 million euros. Those transfers alone represent 32% of Barcelona’s entire revenue stream in 2017-18, while in Real Madrid they only represent 7,2% of their total income in that season. Despite the departures, the two clubs have managed to keep their fans interested in watching them playing live throughout the season and the coverage of Barcelona live streaming games have seen a noticeable increase across the internet.

Real Madrid’s biggest slice of the pie came straight from their marketing efforts, as they cashed in a total sum of 297 million euros. With Adidas for example and looking strictly at sales occurred in the German’s brand official stores, the European champions generated 26 million euros.

Sergio Ramos lifts the UEFA Champions League trophy for Real Madrid in 2018

Another impressive revenue stream has to do with the money made from international competitions and friendlies. As we all know, Real Madrid won the Champions League in the past 3 seasons and in the 2017-18 season they received a total of 85,46 million euros from UEFA during their entire campaign in the Champions League. The Spanish SuperCup and the FIFA Club World Cup trophies gave an additional 8 million euros to the club, 4 million for each competition.

In terms of TV rights, Real Madrid earned an oustanding amount of 178,4 million euros, a number only possible to achieve due to the extreme inequality in these revenues’ distribution among La Liga clubs, which results in a perpetuation of the total domination we’ve seen in Spain from either Real Madrid, Barcelona, with only Atletico Madrid being capable of assuming an outsider role.

Despite all these healthy financial signs, Real Madrid has been extremely quiet in the last couple transfer windows and in the last 2 years their biggest signing was the 18-year old Vinicus Jr. from Flamengo, who costed them 45 million euros. The Merengues also signed Chelsea’s goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois for 35 million euros this summer, as well as Odriozola (30 million euros), and Mariano (21 million euros). Last year the European champions were even more cautious with their spending costs and only paid for 2 players: Theo Hernández for 24 million euros (Atletico Madrid) and Dani Ceballos for 16,5 million euros (Real Betis).

With a new sponsorship contract with Adidas currently in negotiations (rumors say it this deal will break records) and the one with Fly Emirates assuring an income stream of 70 million per season and still valid for the upcoming 4 years (it’s the most lucrative deal in football at this stage), it doesn’t seem like Madrid is going to get into any sort of troubles with their finance anytime soon…